I've been trying to find an audio website player for some time now. A friend years ago created one on Flash with embedded content but it soon fell apart for unknown reasons and I've lost touch with my friend.

I've been using a free player with economic strings attached that works great and includes external media rather than embedded which I'm after - you simply upload 4 files including the flash render .swf file as well as a folder with the mp3 files onto the page you want your player to appear on. However, the colour is a terrible red and the .swf file is a render that does not allow you to edit in my flash software. (I'd like to bring the working file into flash and figure out how to change the color as well as get rid of the ad that appears at the bottom of the player.)

I am a composer, both rock and classical and would gladly exchange an instrumental composition for your videos or whatever. If you're interested in helping, you can view the player I'm using on my site - billfarrellproductions.com  If you click the bottom right corner of the player it takes you to the player site.

If interested, please get back to me. I can send you more information concerning the 4 files to upload. (As well, this player can easily make a playlist of songs.) However, I warn you I'm not a flash programmer, but I take instructions well.

Thanks for your attention.

Bill

Just in case you haven't ever come across it - have you tried SoundCloud? It's a site where you can upload music and there is a player app which you can embed in a website.  http://soundcloud.com

As someone who's placing music on the web for people to hear, I assume you want to reach the most people possible.  That means I would recommend against using Flash.

I don't know how much traffic your site gets, or with what browsers.  However HTML 5 / JS with Audio API may be a better bet then trying to update a plug-in fewer and fewer devices can use (Flash isn't supported on iDevices, Android, Firefox OS, Chrome OS, etc).

This would require you to upgrade your HTML Markup (but it's due for an update to current standards anyway).

I don't see any tracking related JS in your markup, but if you had some, and thus knew what your visitors needed, I could make better recommendations.

-Fenier

Fenier,

I had no idea what you were talking about, so I did some research on html5. My market is for a select few - compositions for a specific purpose, unlike a band or solo artist trying to get his work out there. Most times I make a personal contact with a client for a commission (soundtrack, personal composition (Milestone Project) and theater productions for schools and theater companies). It's worked out quite well for me, got me to Anguilla and a collaboration with bankie banx.

However, I'm now offering much of my music free on my site with the idea of a client then purchasing the production performance track, multi-track wave folder for personal editing and documentation. My thought was to use flash to create a playlist but I see what you mean about some browsers not supporting it. 

However, if I switched over to an html 5 player (looks easy to insert code - I work with dreamweaver) I note that people require explorer 9 and other upgraded browsers to play this simple device? I'm finding that many of my clients - older generation like me, still rely on earlier browsers such as myself to support their purposes.

What are your thoughts on this.  

What I would suggest provides a better experience, and allows you to support older devices as well as newer ones.

What you'd want to do, is covert your site to HTML 5, and use the JavaScript Audio API, with a Flash Fallback.

A walkthrough for this can be seen at:

http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/audio/quick/

When coverting to HTML 5, you'd likely also want to install a HTML 5 shim, such as:

http://modernizr.com/

Doing this allows you a few advantages.

• You can use HTML 5 / CSS 3 features
• Modernizr can make adjustments on the fly for older clients which can't render HTML 5 / CSS 3
• The Audio API will play on supported devices, and if all formats fail, will attempt to play in Flash.

You should also consider installing tracking code, such as Google Analytics, which would let you over time see site traffic, as well as client breakdown to better inform you of features the majority of your users could take advantage of.

-Fenier

Fenier,

Thanks for taking the time to help me out. I'll give it a try. Makes sense to me, but must admit, I'm just a copy and paste code writer. I'll give those two sites some study and see if I can get my head around it.

Too bad you don't live around the corner, I certainly could use your help.

My forte is hard disk recording using pro-tools and sonar as well as a beast of a sampler - gigastudio and omnisphere. So getting my head into website design and development has been quite a stretch, as well as 3D software. I could spend my life learning Vue, etc but fortunately, when asking for some help on this forum, I came across a quantum mechanic prof from the university close by and we've been collaborating ever since, I create the design ideas, he puts them to renders.

Again, thanks for the help. In return, if you ever require a soundtrack, just let me know.

Bill (wishing I'd learned code instead of french)

I'm a front end web developer for a major retailer, if you have questions feel free to run them by me, I can maybe point you in the right direction.

-Fenier

fenier:

Again, I agree with your recommendation, and I've an aquaintance who can perhaps help me with upgrading - html5/js.

However, I have a small request as per your skills in web design. If you're too busy, I understand completely. I have a friend who is the founder of a large foundation looking after orphans - education, therapy, trade skills - in Africa. He and I have been working together recently on a commission he's given me to compose a song outlining the nature and philosophy of the foundation - I'm a composer/songwriter. However, just yesterday he asked if I'd critique the foundations website his son designed. I have a creative son as well and the worse thing in the world is to try and tell him I had trouble with his work - being a sensitive father and all.

If you have a moment to have a look, it's a charitable foundation with a target I'm presuming of an older generation of corporate/philanthropic support.

I know I'm not to 'advertise' websites etc even though this is not money-making however, I'll code the website I'm discussing above. The ORGanization is salamashield and follow the caps for the tag. Also, if it's easier, you could reply to my email - corvotheopera@yahoo.com

Thanks Fenier. I hope I'm not stepping out of bounds with this request.

I'm bill by the way

I reviewed the site in Chrome using a 1650 x 1020 monitor.  Chrome has the following extension installed: PageSpeed Insights (by Google), and this is all stuff that would make the page load faster.

• Optimize images  (images likely contain meta data, making them larger then they need to be).
• Enable Compression (server config, most things should be transmited compressed).
• Serve scaled images (you shouldn't be resizing the image with HTML, make it smaller and serve it actual size).
• Combine small things into CSS Sprites, the site makes 9 HTTP requests for icons.
• Minify JavaScript  (combine JS files via a Concatenation tool)
• Minify CSS (combine CSS files via a Concatenation tool)
• Set browser caching on a number of images.

Not related to speed per say, but other things I noticed:

• Flash video intro doesn't fall back to HTML 5.

• Video auto plays, takes up my full screen, and if the scroll bar didn't exist, I wouldn't even know I could scroll the page. Because I can't see content below it.

• Consider adding a 'Contact' option to the Global Navigation.

• Running the markup through a validaitor returns 41 errors and 3 warnings:

• http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.salamashield.org%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

For me, the page is loading with something like 270 requets, at more than 25 megs of data.   I don't know what network infrastructure in Africa is like, but that's hard for people here (US), and I strongly advise reworking that to be as low as possible.  

Again, that wasn't a full review but was what I noticed after about 10 minutes on the site.  If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks so much, Fenier:

I had the same problems with this site as you. I loved the images, however, size and the special effects spoiled it for me. I also had trouble with the scroll bar, I was searching all over for information links before I finally realized I had to scroll. As well, I was taught many years ago in a desktop publishing course not to use 'fancy' script, not to use bold except perhap a word or two and don't use caps in phrases, sentences and paragraphs. This broke all the rules, I found it tedious to read. I also found the vocabulary could have been brought down to size. If I'm interested in donating, I don't want to have a dictionary handy. 

I'm talking with the founder on tuesday (I think I told you his son and partner put together the website and I think he wanted my opinion (since I'm his commissioned composer) on the site because he had difficulty with it as well. How do you tell your son you don't like his artistic work, eh? That's his problem, I think he just wanted verification before he did the dirty deed.

Thanks again, Fenier. If all goes according to plan, I'm going to make the leap into html5 next week. Again, being a relative 'old timer' back in the day we strived to pay our debts - so if ever you require a music soundbyte or back track to a video, you know where you can find me.

As well, I don't think I passed along my website to you, again coded: I'm

billfarrellproductions with of course a dot com. Hope this isn't spotted! ha ha ha

Note I'm simply offering the music sample on site as an mp3, for the moment, let the viewer decide what they want to use to hear it, until I've upgraded.

Bill 

No problem, glad to help.

His son seems to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, however, if I had to guess is using a WYSIWUG editor to do the actual coding.  I am betting this is where most of the mix/matched tags is occuring.

A lot of what I pointed out is more in depth than straight HTML and CSS.   It's factoring in how much data actually has to cross the wire.   The heavier a site is, and the more round trips it takes, the slower it loads and so on.  A simple concept, but often overlooked.

A few other things are User Experience issues.  The founder can validate this by doing a focus group.  Show a bunch of people whom know nothing about the company the site, and see what they do.  The following book is a good guide to 'to it yourself' UX testing. Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems.

Since this is a non profit, using a metrics package like Google Analytics can yield some useful information, and if it's not already in use (I didn't check), he'd be well served adding that package, or similar to get some in depth data on how people view his site.

Once again, Fenier, thanks so much for taking the time. I'm adding your information to my agenda for tuesday's meeting. Also, it might be interesting to note I'm involved with a singer, musician from Anguilla (my favorite place in the world). His name's bankie banx and he has a foundation to help island kids in trouble - Stingray - again, like me, music based. He has a great website, again to avoid the coding issue, just google bankie banx and check out his official website. He's a pretty cool guy - he be cool, mon.

Wish I lived in texas, i'd love to sit with you around the computer and website design. Being a musician, collaboration is part of my make-up, so much so that I have a bio-chem prof at U of Waterloo who teams up with me to create 3D illustrations for my work. My time is precious and don't want to spend it learning Poser, Blender and Vue, took me long enough to get ProTracks and Sonar to speak to me - ha ha ha. Also a couple of guys (quantum physics profs) who offer great guitar tracks for me. Funny how most great guitarist I've come across in my long life have been brilliant, yet love playin' that rock and roll et all. Must be the mathematical patterning. Maybe my old high school teacher was right - Bill, all life is summed up in Calculus. Yikes!

Hope it goes well for you today, let me know how it goes.

We've postponed until tomorrow, Wednesday. There's a large proposal on the table for my partner that he thought he'd have it finished. Thanks for checking in, Fenier. We're definitely meeting tomorrow evening.

I talked to him briefly about his site and the reason for the change is he finds other similar websites, such as Steven Lewis, a Canadian that works along side many foundations, quite boring and he wanted to 'spruce it up' a bit. I'm going to tell him I love the photos and video clips but the presentation is the problem.

As well, I've got a sound byte I've been working on for the foundation, quite possibly a Milestone Project, as I call them, where I'm commissioned along with my 'team' to create and produce a song for a purpose, in this case Salama Shield.

If you'd enjoy the opportunity to hear this piece I call African Market, I could send it to you. I'm leary about putting it on my website until I've gone over it with several fine-toothed combs - I'm a bit of a perfectionist and obsess over the slightest detail of a song. However, I'll need your email to send, but no big deal, if you'd like to communicate through renderocity, in this day and age, I understand completely. I also have a dropbox account. 

I do have a quick question for you. Because my studio is stable, I'm not about to switch out of my XP Pro software. I know I'm not running any more than 2 gig but for hard disk recording, as I say, everything is very stable. I am considering a graphics computer in the summer, but right now it's music that's on my mind. So, my question is: I've found yahoo and some other sites have suddenly changed completely and my Windows 8 is now running in compatible mode, a lot has changed. If my site moves into html5/js, is windows 8 on an XP platform going to be an issue?

Thanks again, Fenier.

bill: corvotheopera@yahoo.com

Further: Here is stephen lewis' foundation website my partner was comparing his to: http://stephenlewisfoundation.org/ again, code if this does not get through

stephenlewisfoundation and it's an ORGanization - clandestine or what?

As well, my partner is very well spoken with a great voice. One of my specialties is recording vocals song or narrative. So what would you think of a new site where when you open the site you have my african soundbyte along with his narration outlining his passion? Of course, there would be a button to 'turn off sound'.

Thanks again Fenier.

Bill

Are you asking if running Windows 8 on hardware meant for Windows XP will be a problem?

I am inclinded to say yes, but need actual hardware specs to confirm.

Microsoft maintains a compatability mode list they place sites on.  You may be being placed into compat mode for no actual reason.  You could disable it and see what happens, but its often used to ensure the page loads properly.

In general I personally dislike auto-playing anything where you may not expect it.   The person may not have speakers on, may have speakers playing something, may not have speakers at all, etc.

I find it's a better user experience to have a button that is click to play, but you could either transcribe the open or similiar, with a eye catching font styling to draw attention to you want them to play it.

As added bonus, if you tied metrics to the play feature, you could actually see how many people bother to hit play.

Great meeting, he agreed with what I said but, and here's the kicker, he's asked me to talk with his son and see if there's a way to 'gently' compromise on the site. You're right about the choice to play, I've thought the same thing. I meet his son next week. Yes, I'll rehearse.